Tuesday, July 2, 2013

TMNT (Vol. 2) #13

Publication date: October, 1995

Story, pencils, inks: Jim Lawson

Letters: Mary Kelleher

Colors: Eric Vincent and Altered Earth Arts

Cover: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman

“The Battle”

Summary:

Leonardo ducks back inside the cave as the guards on the
tarmac open fire. The Turtles, Braunze,
the purple alien and the Triceraton realize that they’re cornered and are out
of options. Suddenly, they hear a noise
and Donatello takes a peek to see what’s going on. Triceraton attack ships are strafing the DARPA
base and attacking the guards. In the
midst of the chaos, the Turtles escape the cave and agree to regroup at the end
of the airstrip.

Up in the Triceraton asteroid ship, the Commander tells his
Navigation Officer to set the ship for a collision course with the DARPA
base. Their ship is already doomed from
being adrift in space for years and their failure in battle is assured. Still, the Commander wants to die with honor.

On the airstrip, everyone fights their way through the
carnage and regroups. Suddenly, Braunze
reads the Triceraton’s thoughts and realizes he’s the one who called in the
attack and has been deceiving them all along.
The Triceraton shoots Braunze, leaving a huge hole in his torso. Dying, Braunze tells Leo that the Triceraton
asteroid ship is on a collision course with the base and the explosion will kill
thousands. He tells them to flee as far
and as fast as they can, then dies. The
Triceraton gloats that his people will invade and conquer the Earth. However, he fails to notice one of the
Triceraton attack ships fall apart just above him; a piece of debris falling on
and crushing him.

The purple alien tells Leo that there may be a weapon
back in the base that can stop the Triceraton asteroid ship from impacting with
the Earth. Leo offers to go back with
the alien, but he refuses and takes a Jeep by himself. With no choice, the Turtles and Casey flee
the base. In the Jeep, Braunze appears
next to the alien; his entire death having been a telepathic ruse. The alien tells Braunze that the “inter-phasic
cannon” within the base can cause the Triceraton ship to phase through the
Earth’s crust and dissolve in the molten core… if they can get to it in
time. Braunze is pleased, saying that
after they’ve stopped the ship, all that will be left to do is wipe the TMNT’s
memories of this entire fiasco (claiming that it’s “safer that way”). As the Turtles and Casey run, the ship
crashes. They’re immediately engulfed in
a fireball and disintegrated.

Leo awakens on the couch in April’s apartment. Shadow is playing video games and Casey is
cleaning up her toys. Confused, Leo asks
when they all got back from Nevada.
Casey laughs and tells Leo that none of them have ever even been to
Nevada; he must have been dreaming. Leo picks up Shadow and holds
her in his arms. He looks out the
window, trying hard to remember.
Meanwhile, a mysterious man (Braunze) looks at him and smiles, silently bidding
him goodbye.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (Vol. 2) #12. From here, continuity branches in two
directions:

**The story continues in TMNT (Vol. 3) #1. When originally written, the Image series was
the official continuation of the Mirage TMNT universe and carried over a number
of plot points. However, it was later
retconned from canonicity.

*This issue was originally published with a 2-page
interview with Erik Larsen conducted by Michael Dooney regarding the future of
the TMNT with Image Comics.

Review:

Volume 2 is such a disappointing read. It starts out strong with an arc of
introspective character pieces, as the Turtles ponder where they will go with
their lives now that their blood debt to the Foot Clan has been terminated. There’s a lot of talk about “what if” and as
a reader you’re completely engrossed in those questions and potential outcomes.

…Then the plot kicks in and all that stuff gets left in
the dust. Whatever becomes of Leo’s rage
about losing his team and finding a purpose beyond being a leader? Nothing.
Whatever becomes of Michelangelo’s frustrations regarding trying to live
as close to a “normal” life as possible?
Nothing. Whatever becomes of Raph’s
craving for independence and a solitary place all his own? Nothing.
Where the FUCK is Splinter!?

During the Baxter Stockman arc, the book takes a heel
turn away from all the fascinating character work and just becomes a whole lot
of dull action stuff. While it was
enjoyable during the Baxter arc because it fulfilled a long simmering plot thread, the DARPA arc is just a whole lot of running
around shooting things with minimal characterization for anybody. I get the feeling that behind the scenes
nonsense might have been a participating culprit in this mess of an ending,
Lawson essentially being told to forget about his longform storylines and wrap
everything up neatly in four issues, but that doesn’t make it any less of a
boring, often painful read.

A book that was doing SO MUCH to grow and mature the
characters when it began essentially forgot all about them by the end. I’ve harped on this before, but just look at
Braunze. Could he be more of a shallow,
uncharismatic, uninteresting bore? Are
we supposed to care when he dies? Are we
supposed to care when he lives? Are we
supposed to care when he melodramatically bids Leo farewell? Because I sure as Hell didn’t. There was nothing TO that guy; no
personality, no relatable motivations, no nothing.

The whole volume just peters out at the end after getting
off to such a strong start. I sometimes
wonder what COULD have been, had fortunes been kinder back in ’94 - ‘95. What if Lawson HAD been allowed to tell his
longform stories? Would we have gotten
fulfillment on all those character arcs he set up at the beginning? Would everyone have grown and changed as much
as it was implied they would?

Moot questions, I suppose, as what’s done is done. This is the ending we wound up getting and it
pretty well sucked. Once again, the loss
of Eric Talbot’s inks really kills the thing on a visual level and Eric Vincent’s
colors do not mesh with Lawson’s self-inked work.

Sadly, the abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion to this Volume
2 would only be the beginning of a trend. Image’s
Volume 3 would also end with its lingering plot threads unconcluded (at the
time, anyway). Volume 4, as of this
writing, is STILL on “indefinite hiatus” with all its storylines dangling in
space. Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) began
a number of multi-issue narratives: The Gang War, the Tang Amaya storyline, the
machinations of the Foot Mystics. And
none of those arcs would be concluded, either, by the time that book was over.

From this point on, Mirage’s TMNT comics never, EVER
finish what they start and it will become very tedious and very
frustrating. I’m not meaning to be all
gloom and doom here, as there are still PLENTY of solid, exciting, A-list
Turtles stories from Mirage to look forward to, post Volume 2. Just don’t expect any of their longform
storylines to ever offer a satisfying conclusion.

Grade: F (as in, “For what it’s worth, the interview with
Erik Larsen in the back of the book is good for a laugh. He sounds SO excited about disfiguring the
Turtles and killing off long established characters. Seriously, he brags about those things. Ahhhhh, the ‘90s…”)

There's great character work near the beginning and the Baxter arc is a good read. Taken on the whole, yeah, the DARPA arc really brings the grade point average down, but the individual stories near in the first 2/3 of the volume are good reads, mostly.